STS 236
Automatic Culture: From the Mechanical Turk to A.I.
Last Offered Fall 2018
Division II
Cross-listed HSCI 236
This course is not offered in the current catalog

Using literary writing and visual representation as our primary points of entry, we will study the history of automation, exploring its effects as idea and as material implementation upon public and private spheres, craftsmen and courts, wage-laborers, artists, and inventors. Readings from such authors as E.T.A. Hoffman, Kurt Vonnegut, Roald Dahl, and Sydney Padua will be supplemented with studies in the history and historiography of technology. The objects we examine will be as different from one another as the dulcimer-playing android presented as a gift to Marie Antoinette, IBM’s Deep Blue, and contemporary devices like Amazon’s Echo.